Over the course of a brilliant recording career that now spans more than four decades, Belgian classical guitar great Raphaella Smits has shown herself to be a masterful interpreter of lyrical pieces by a broad range of composers stretching back to the Renaissance, moving into the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, and through the 20th century. She has devoted full or parts of albums to many of the historic giants of classical guitar repertoire, including Fernando Sor, Mauro Giuliani, Napol\u00e9on Coste, Johann Kaspar Mertz, Antonio Jim\u00e9nez Manj\u00f3n, Agust\u00edn Barrios, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Manuel Ponce, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Leo Brouwer, to name just some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smits\u2019 latest triumph for Soundset Recordings is called Che Argentina<\/a><\/em>, a passion project devoted to 20th-century works by seven Argentine composers. As she says in the album\u2019s liner notes, \u201cSince the 1980s, I have been a regular guest in Argentina to play concerts. Twelve tours brought me to all corners of the country, on stages large and small, from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego, adjacent to Antarctica… It is a country where music is part of everyday life, and where especially the guitar is always and everywhere present.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n